The Things We Should Have Done
by grazed142
Summary: Exactly one week after she came home from the hospital, Sara made a list.
1. Chapter 1

All The Things We Should Have Done

Exactly one week after she came home from the hospital, Sara made a list. Grissom was asleep on the couch, muttering things in his sleep. He did that a lot now. He sometimes woke her up calling her in his sleep, but that was okay because she woke him up screaming. They were both pretty fucked up. Sara bit on her eraser and tried to concentrate. The only thing she had written so far was _Things To Do Before I Die._ She had thought of a million things when she was trapped, hadn't she? She had thought of a million more when her lungs were burning for air and finding only water. She tapped her pencil on the table. Go skydiving? Too risky. Try escargot? She wasn't sure why that one had popped up at all. Have sex in the ocean? She didn't actually want to go anywhere near water. In the end, she only wrote down _live. _

They made her see a counselor before going back to work. She was tall and had a very long face. Her name was Penelope, but she liked to be called Penny. She gave Sara a journal and told her to write her feelings down, as if this was a new and novel idea.

"It's okay to cry," Penny assured Sara, smiling confidentially at her. "Just start talking. Anything you want. _It's okay to cry._"

But there was nothing to cry about. She had been under a car, and now she wasn't. She had been in danger, and now she wasn't. Really, she just wanted to go back to work. Penny was not impressed. On the fifth day of counseling, Penny pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows.

"This is quite an ordeal you've gone through, Sara." Her fingernails were painted an odd, pale salmon color. "I'm slightly worried about the way you're dealing with it."

Sara shifted in her seat. "I'm fine. Really. I'm just…I'm just not really an emotional person." And as soon as the sentence had left her mouth, Sara wanted to laugh at the gross inaccuracy of it. Not an emotional person…when had she started telling such outlandish lies? She had always been an emotional person. Before. And then she realized that she hadn't really cried, hadn't truly been emotional at all since first waking up to whitewashed walls and a sterile smell. She looked back at Penny, who seemed to be rolling this new piece of information around in her mouth as if it had a bitter and unpleasant taste.

"Sorry," Sara said, shrugging a little and feeling something like realization erupt inside of her. "I'm just not." And it was true, it was true.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: **I'd just like to note that I'm really, really bad at things that are over two pages/have chapters. So this may all be kind of irregular and weird. But hopefully you'll enjoy reading it anyway…review if you want!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sara drove home with a strange new energy vibrating dangerously in her bones. She thought of her blank list. She was _alive. _Everything she had ever wanted to do, everything she had ever doubted she could do, was still possible. She felt seventeen again, smelling freedom in every breeze of campus air, feeling it in every textbook, drinking it in every sip of stale beer. She was strong.

Sara could hear Grissom humming opera in the shower when she tossed her keys onto the kitchen counter. She made her way into the bedroom and sat on the bed. Light radiated from the closed bathroom door. Grissom was a private person. She had known it the first time she had seen his office, with its closed blinds and dim lighting and jars of bugs. She had known it the first time they had slept together, when he had snuck out of bed the moment he thought she was asleep to pull on some clothes. He was strangely self-conscious about being seen sans clothes. It was one of his many quirks, along with cockroach racing and aversion of the word _sex. _Oh, he would say it without a thought when they were talking about a crime scene. But never with her. It was alternatively endearing and annoying.

"Sara," he'd murmur when he pressed his lips to her collarbone, "I want to make love to you."

They both knew they had enough love for the other to last them several lifetimes. Sara didn't understand why they needed to make morein the hours before work, on his couch in a whirlwind of passion. Couldn't they just have _sex_ sometimes?

Shredding her tank top, her jeans, her sneakers, she pushed open the door of the bathroom and pulled the shower curtain away. Grissom was in the process of washing an arm. He looked up, too shocked to even be embarrassed about his nakedness. His eyes were the color of the soap. It was Irish Springs.

"Sara. What are you…why…are you okay?"

She wasn't afraid of water. She wasn't afraid of the rain. It was irrational. She stepped in with him and let the water drip through her hair, down her nose and onto her shoulders. It felt good.

"Fuck me." Her breathing was hard.

He raised the hand that wasn't holding the soap and brought it up to her cheek, searching her eyes as if he'd find an answer there. Sara ran her hands up and down his chest, his arms.

"We should have done this, you know?"

He ran his thumb over a strand of her hair and looked worried.

"Done what? Made love in the shower?" He dropped the soap back onto its dish and took her hands like he was afraid she would slip away.

She kissed him, hard.

"I love you, Sara," he murmured. "You know I love you."

She drew closer to him. "No…tell me you want me."

When he looked at her, she couldn't quite define the emotion in his eyes. Finally, he spoke.

"I want you."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Every step was victorious. Sara Sidle was back at work, and every single criminal in Las Vegas—in the entire state of Nevada—had better watch out. Her ribs were still kind of sore, and she was still being forced to see Penelope, but she was nevertheless indestructible. She was also late. Sara entered the break room in hopes of slipping in unnoticed.

"Sara!" Catherine sprung out of her chair, closing the length between them in two wide strides to pull her into a hug. Sara stiffened. Catherine had never, to her memory, hugged her. She wasn't sure of the appropriate reaction. Putting her arms around Catherine unsurely, she watched dolefully as Greg, Nick, and Warrick stood as well, muttering hellos that were somehow both wary and enthusiastic. Grissom was fiddling with some papers, looking uncomfortable.

"Um. Nick, Catherine. 419 at the Bellagio," he muttered finally.

As everyone finally settled into their seats, Sara finally gazed around. Catherine kept sneaking looks at her. Nick was making frequent eye contact with her in what seemed to be a wordless communication of empathy, and Greg wouldn't look at her at all. Warrick kept clearing his throat.

Grissom thumbed through his papers a bit more. "Warrick, you're with me. And Greg, Sara—" He rushed over her name as though saying both syllables would cause suspicion—"You two have a case on Bush Street. Young man found dead in his home."

When she spoke, Sara found that her voice was light and confident.

"You ready, Greggo?"

Greg smiled at her. It was a thankful smile, a slow smile, a relieved smile. It was a _you have no idea how glad I am that you're really okay _smile.

She looked away.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: **Um, because clarification that I don't own CBS's characters is apparently necessary, I don't own CBS's characters. K? Great. ayesha-s and Print Dust, thanks for the reviews! Feedback is awesome.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Greg peered at the tabletop with a creased forehead.

"Jesus, it's dusty in here."

From her spot where she crouched by the victim, Sara murmured her agreement. Dust settled in layers on the furniture and swirled in the sunlight that streamed in from the open window. It blanketed the floor where Ted Porter, 29, had breathed his last breath.

"It looks like he didn't even live here."

She stood up, still watching the victim. Somehow, she couldn't take her eyes off of him. He lay on his side, curled slightly. Three gunshot wounds penetrated his torso and left his blood shining like a scarlet mirror on the dusty floor. His mouth was bloody too, his teeth lined with red.

"You process," Sara said. "I'm gonna scan the perimeter, see if I can find anything. Someone could have come in through the window."

Greg looked up shortly from the print dust. "Mmkay."

It was a good day. There were footprints outside the window. Sara snapped a photo and wondered, fleetingly, just how many times she had photographed things like this. Threatening footprints, weapons, dead bodies. She had photographed the worst days of people's lives just as wedding photographers photographed the best.

The shoe print was approximately a size 9, male. Circular pattern. Rounded at the toe. And then faded brown, approximately size 9 male shoes were right in front of her nose, disturbing her crime scene. Sara looked up, squinting in the sun.

"Hey baby," he drawled. She looked up to see a tall, gangly teenager. He was dressed in an undershirt and jeans that showed off green striped boxers. He had two dog tags hanging around his neck and an equally tall, gangly friend standing beside him. He had a pocketknife in his jeans pocket. Standing slowly, Sara fingered her gun. Her breathing was even.

"You two are going to have to leave."

"Oh, a crime scene, huh? I thought you were just here visiting the faggot. My bad."

She breathed in through her mouth, because the smell of pot was almost too thick to inhale.

"What do you mean, 'faggot'?"

"I mean he's a fucking faggot. You know, gay. Queer. F-A-G-I-T."

With every letter, he took a step closer to her, hands in pockets. He was looking at her with a strange sort of recognition.

"Dude, come on." His buddy ran a hand through dark, stringy hair in discomfort. "We gotta go, man."

Sara pushed on. "Did this faggot have a boyfriend?"

But now he was laughing, staring at her with the two dark wells that had replaced his eyes. He took the pocketknife out of his pocket and waved it around a bit at her.

"No, man, check it out. I know you. Saw you on the news. I remember cuz you're kinda hot, see. CSI Sara Sidle."

He drawled every syllable mockingly, cockily.

Sara stared at the knife with a detached interest, watched the way it reflected the sunlight. "I could arrest you right now," she said, even though they both knew she wouldn't. Her voice sounded strangely cold even to her own ears.

He continued on. "Kidnapped and left for dead under a fucking Mustang. Were you scared?"

"I'll tell you all about it if you tell me about Ted Porter," she said, shrugging. He ignored her.

"And what about that older guy, the boss man? Was he scared? He looked like a pretty damn caring boss."

Suddenly all she could hear was her own blood rushing in her head. It drowned out the sound of Greg's amplifying yells.

The kid placed his knife gently, delicately, against Sara's neck. Behind him, the second boy turned and started running. Sara stayed still as he smiled at her.

"I'm gonna tell you, that boss of yours looked pretty scared to me. About as scared as _you'd_ be if _he_ were the one under that car, I guess."

And then the barrel of her gun was pressed into his stomach, hard, and the pocketknife lay on the ground. Her fingers were turning pale with pressure. Energy was flowing through Sara's body so dangerously that she couldn't even feel the cut on her neck.

"Sara! Hey! Hey!"

Greg was running towards them.

Pale, the kid gazed nervously toward him, then back at Sara. He backed away with his hands held up.

"Fucking psycho," he muttered quietly. The wells of his eyes deepened and widened. Then he, too, was running, eluding Greg's shouts of protest. Sara watched him go.

Finally Greg reached her, where his eyes rested on her neck.

"Oh God. You're bleeding."

Numbly, Sara took one hand off her gun and ran it over her neck. It wasn't bad. Just a thin layer of blood darkened her fingers.

"Just a scrape," she said.

Greg frowned. "God, Sara. Are you okay? How'd he corner you like that? Did he have another weapon? Take you by surprise or something?"

Sara shook her head. "No…I just…handled the situation badly, that's all. He has size 9 shoes. I was questioning him, and he was high, and...it got out of hand. Sorry I scared you, Greg."

He stared at her. She didn't realize she had cocked her gun until Greg pried it gently from her fingers and clicked the safety back on. He made a small noise in the back of his throat.

"You can't do this, Sara. You can't question suspects all alone in the middle of a crime scene when both of you has a weapon." His voice was quiet.

You're not invincible, Sara."

But that was hard to believe, because she didn't feel anything at all.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: **The casefile in here is vastly, laughably unrealistic. I realize that. But I'm too lazy to do research. So anyway...thanks to the people that reviewed this! It really makes my day.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Size nine shoes?"

He had his hands clasped to avoid nervous movements. After so many years, Sara had memorized Gil Grissom's idiosyncrasies.

"Sara, _I_ wear size nine shoes. You know as well as I do that something like that doesn't justify what you did at that crime scene. I don't know what wouldjustify it. You could…could have been…"

He sighed and ran a hand over his eyes. Some things were too true to say out loud.

Sara focused her eyes anywhere but on Grissom. On his desk, the books behind him.

"But he was _there. _It wasn't just outside, either. Greg said that he found size 9 shoe prints all over the house. And this kid knew the victim. Said Porter was gay. We wouldn't even know that if I hadn't talked to him."

Grissom blew out a long breath.

"We have to be patient. You know that. Sara…please look at me."

She didn't.

"I could take you off the case for this."

Finally, she turned her eyes on him. "Grissom, I can work. I'm fine. Really."

He cocked his head slightly, and for once, she was the enigmatic one. A thousand puzzle pieces that didn't even fit together.

"Okay. But Sara, if this happens again…"

He was gazing at the small mark on her neck.

"I understand. Listen, I've got that last session with Penelope after work…"

His eyes snapped up to hers, and he managed a hopeful smile.

"I'll make vegetable lasagna?"

Sara winked at him. "Sounds good."

She could feel his eyes on her as she walked away.

Greg was analyzing Ted Porter's clothing when Sara walked into the room. She stared at the shirt for a moment. It was white stained with wine red. She dragged her eyes away.

"Greg, did we get the results back from the prints we ran on the pocketknife from yesterday?"  
He looked up quickly, eyes wide.

"We ran it for prints?"

Sara nodded. "Yup. If something comes up, I was thinking we'd run by his house. This kid is involved, I know it. He has the right kind of shoes, and he knows the victim."

She watched Greg bite the inside of his lip, looking conflicted.

"Did you…did you get permission from Grissom?"

Sara nodded. "Yeah. If we get a match, we're good to go. I'm gonna go check with Hodges, okay?"

She could feel his eyes on her as she walked away.

Randall White lived in a rundown brick house two blocks away from Ted Porter. As they walked up to the door, two bored officers trailing behind them, Greg sidled up to Sara hesitantly.

"Do you want me to talk to him? I mean…it must have been scary, what happened."

"It's really not a big deal," she said as she rang the doorbell.

Through the corner of her eye, she could see the confused creases appear on Greg's forehead.

A smiling, portly woman answered the door. She wasn't what Sara had been expecting.

"Hi there. Can I help you all?"

Sara pushed her sunglasses up to her head and pulled out a picture.

"Hi, ma'am, we're looking for Randall White."

"My son? He isn't here right now. Can I ask why you're here?" Behind her, a tall and muscular teenager walked toward the door slowly.

"Mom? What's going on?"

Sara stared at him. He was wearing a baby blue polo shirt and khakis. He looked like he'd never been in any kind of trouble in his life. And he was wearing the exact shoes that Randall White had been wearing yesterday. She could see the dark, fine dirt on the tips.

"Do you mind if I take your shoes?" Sara asked him, pulling a pair of gloves out of her back pocket. As he sputtered, she turned back to the woman.

"Your son Randall was at our crime scene yesterday wearing those shoes. We'd like to compare them to the other prints found at the scene to exclude Randall from our investigation as a murder suspect."

Shaking her head with pursed lips, the woman turned back toward her other son.

"Tom?"

Tom nodded, hopping slightly as he pulled off each shoe.

"Yeah, sure. These are mine, but Randy wears them all the time."

Sara smiled at him. "Great. Thank you."

In the car on the way back to the lab, Sara rolled down the windows and let the wind rush through her hair.

"Wanna listen to one of your CDs, Greg?"

Greg snorted. "What, Manson? Since when do you like my music?"

"Since now."

His forehead wrinkled in confusion again, but in a few moments he was rustling through his CD collection to find something gloriously obnoxious.

And as the noise filled the car, Sara turned up the volume and pushed her sunglasses back down onto her nose.

"We should have done this," she sighed.

Greg laughed slightly, and then they were quiet. But even with the blaring music of Marilyn Manson, Sara couldn't quite drown out Greg's unasked question.

Grissom's townhouse smelled like dog food and old books. It smelled like his aftershave and her perfume. But it did not smell like vegetable lasagna.

"Grissom?"

No answer. She walked into the living room slowly, shivering slightly. Was it cold?  
"Grissom, you here?"

He should have been home at least an hour before her. She quickened her pace a little toward his office.

Sara opened the door to Grissom's office to find him bent over his desk, reading what looked like a textbook.

"Hey," she said softly. "Are you okay?"

He shook his head, and when he spoke it was like the first distant roll of thunder before a downpour.

. "You went to that kid's house? You went without even _mentioning _it to me? You lied to Greg? Sara, you don't even know how many rules you've broken today."

"Grissom, we got what could be valuable evidence…"

He cut her off, springing off his chair to brush past her into the living room. The chair creaked its objection.

"I don't _care, _Sara. I don't care about the fucking case. You could have lost your job. You could have gotten hurt."

He was yelling now, and in the back of her mind, Sara wondered at her indifference. A month ago, she would have been yelling back. But now…did it matter?

Sara contemplated the shade of red on his cheeks, noted the decibels of his voice.

"Grissom, look at me. I'm fine. Really. I'm sorry, okay?"

But he only shook his head and heaved a huge sigh. The storm was dying down, leaving damage in its wake.

"No, Sara…we're not okay. Something's wrong here. You're not even hearing me. You're being rash, putting yourself in danger. You're not okay. If you were, you wouldn't have to end every sentence with 'really'. I'm losing you, Sara. Again. I don't know if I can handle it."

Something tugged at her heart. How many times had he protected her? She should have protected him, too. Should have, should have.

_To remove a problem, remove the catalyst. _

"I'm sorry, Grissom. I'll go."

Sara was out the door before he could call after her.


	5. Chapter 5

It had been months since Sara had even been in her apartment. As she walked over the dusty floors, she considered vaguely that she should have sold it. She had been perfectly happy living in Grissom's townhouse, hadn't she? But now, as Sara took in the abandoned silence and the empty refrigerator and the dead plants, it somehow seemed appropriate that this should be her home. Her place of hibernation.

The phone rang, and she knew it was Grissom. She let it ring.

_Hi, this is Sara. I'm not here right now, please leave a message. _

The Sara he was trying to reach had been gone for a while.

_Sara, this is Grissom. Look, if you're there…I understand if you need some time alone. But…call me tonight, okay? Just so I know where you are? Okay…bye._

Sara dialed in the number of his townhouse slowly and thought about how she should have put it on speed dial. His phone rang twice.

"Sara?"

She wasn't sure how he'd known it was her, but he did, so she skipped the formalities.

"I'm at my apartment."

There was a short pause. Sara pictured him furrowing his eyebrows.

"Do you…do you want me to come over?" His voice was earnest.

"No, it's okay…listen, I'll talk to you tomorrow, okay?"

"Okay. You um, you know I need to take you off the case. Right?"

The case. Ted Porter, deep red blood, size 9 shoes.

"Right. Sure. Listen, I have to go. Bye."

Sara hung up the phone quickly so that she wouldn't hear the rushed and desperate _I love you _on the other end. She should have told him more often how wonderful he was. She should have loved him with her whole heart. Now, she was tired.

She changed her sheets because they were dusty. Then she slept, and didn't know whether she screamed in her sleep or not.

The sun was filtering in lazily through her windows when Sara woke up. And someone was ringing her doorbell. Slightly dizzy, she stumbled into the hall and opened the door.

"You never called. You didn't even pick up your phone," he said the moment he saw her.

Sara only yawned as Grissom looked her up and down, taking in her pajamas and rumpled hair. "How long have you slept? Do you know how late it is?"

She blinked at him. She was off the case, wasn't she? He had torn her away from her cave.

"Why does it matter?" she asked, voice scratchy.

"I'm making you coffee," he murmured as he slipped past her into the kitchen, kissing her on the forehead as he went.

Sara took a seat by the counter and watched as he rummaged through her cupboards. Old boxes of cereal, macaroni and cheese, instant muffin mix.

"Don't you have work?" she asked, yawning again.

Grissom only began to make the coffee.

"You know you can talk to me, right? About anything."

Even with his back to her, Sara could feel the waves of uncertainty radiate from Grissom as powerfully as she could smell the coffee that he was dumping into the filter. He liked strong coffee.

"What, have you been talking to Penelope?" she asked.

He chuckled softly. The sound of it made her wish, distantly, for things she didn't want to wish for. She closed her eyes against it.

"Sara."

_Fucking psycho._

"Sara."

_You're not invincible._

"Sara?"

_I'm losing you. _

"I'm awake," she mumbled, and forced herself to open her eyes. She ran one hand through her hair. When was the last time she had washed it?

"I can see that." Grissom handed her a cup of coffee, and she took it without looking up at his face. She took big sips and let it burn her tongue, listened to Grissom take a big breath. He did that before diving into awkward or difficult social situations.

"Talk to me," he said. "Please. I need you to talk to me. Really talk."

The coffee couldn't shake away the numbness.

"I think I'm going crazy."

She watched his fingers stroke his cup rhythmically. His fingernails were crudely clipped.

"You've been through a lot. You're having trouble dealing with your emotions. I understand that."

But he didn't, he didn't.

"Grissom, there are so many things we should have done, you know that? We should have eaten out more. We should have slept in more. We should have argued less. We should have paid more attention to Bruno, we should have…" Sara trailed off, rubbing her eyes and wishing she could feel tears there.

He cupped his hand over hers. His palm was warm.

"Sara, you're still here. You can't just judge your life by what you did or didn't do before…what happened. You're just as alive as you were a month ago."

She shook her head. "I'm not. Something's wrong with me. I know it. I can't feel anything. I'm not sure I _am _still here. Am I?"

Grissom took the coffee cup out of her hand and set it on the table. Then he put his arms around her and she nestled into him, because it was a good place to hibernate. And he said, "You're here. And I'm here, Sara. We'll get through this."

She nodded. But she did not cry and she did not say _I need you, _because when you are hibernating you are not truly, fully alive, and only living things have needs.


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: **I just wanted to say that I'm sorry about the weird formatting. Sometimes it's double spaced, sometimes not...hopefully it isn't too hard to understand. Also, thanks so much if you reviewed. It means a lot.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"So, how are you, Sara?"

Penelope was twirling a black pen around with her right hand, gazing at Sara with undisguised interest. Being torn off the case had awarded Sara five more therapy sessions. Five more hours of wanting to be home, asleep. Five more days of coming to work and _not _working.

"I'm great," Sara said. She was tired.

Penelope nodded and stopped spinning the pen long enough to scribble something down.

"I think you're avoiding confronting your issues," said Penelope finally. "And possibly struggling with depression, too. Do you think that sounds accurate?"

Sara locked eyes with Penelope for a moment. "Sure." Her voice was cool and didn't seem to belong to her anymore.

Penelope sighed and wrote down something else. It obviously wasn't anything positive.

"You're pulling away from the people that love you."

Outside Penelope's window, the sun was shining with a burning intensity. It lit the dim room and illuminated Penelope's perfectly tanned skin, her red painted lips. Sara watched them open and close, read the words that rested there.

"It doesn't always end in pain and fear, Sara."

She didn't go home after Penelope. Instead, she let her legs wander. She passed the empty break room. She passed the layout room, where Greg was probably working their case. She already knew the ending to that story. Stupid, stoned, asshole teenager kills a gay man and leaves him leaking blood in a dusty and abandoned house. Besides, she didn't want to see Greg look at her with those eyes. Instead, she wandered towards Grissom's office. As Sara neared the half-closed door, two somber voices drifted toward her so quietly that she had to stop to hear them.

"So how's she doing?" It was Brass. She pictured him sitting with his hands clasped in his lap, an expression of sympathetic comradeship on his face.

"She's quiet," answered Grissom, sounding stressed. "She sleeps a lot. It's like…like she doesn't realize that she's alive. She's…distant somehow."

Sara kept walking. Her stomach hurt.

Lab. More offices. Bathrooms.

She pushed open the door to the women's restroom and stared into the sink, leaning lightly on the counter. In the fluorescent lights, her hands were unnaturally pale. She thought of driving home from crime scenes with light and wind pouring in through the open windows. She thought of sitting in Grissom's townhouse, watching the fire crackle and laugh while he played with her hair absently. Then she concentrated hard to push those images out of her head.

"Sara?"

She turned to find Catherine looking at her with her head slightly cocked. She was wearing a very nice white business jacket.

"Hey." She should have let Catherine know how much she admired her.

"I heard you're taking some more time off from work," Catherine said, trying and failing to sound nonchalant. She ambled over and began to wash her hands in the sink beside Sara's.

"Yeah. I've got more therapy with Penelope, too." Sara gave her a small smirk.

Catherine nodded. "That's good," she said, as if this were a solid and undisputed fact.

Sara frowned a little and turned to go. The lights were too bright. So was Catherine's top.

"Okay, well…I guess I'll see you later."

Catherine waited until Sara was almost at the door to speak.

"I know you don't want to be around people right now, Sara. You don't feel like trying. But you should know that this is tearing Grissom up. So just…try? For him?"

Sara didn't turn around.

"I really admire you, Catherine." The words sounded corny even as they left her lips. But her voice sounded a little more like her own.

And she knew even as she walked away that she had left Catherine confused and wondering. That was nice.

The second time she walked by Grissom's office, it was quiet and the door was completely closed. She turned the knob, relishing the cool metal on her palm, and slipped into the room. It was wonderfully dark.

"Grissom?"

The couch shifted in response.

"Hey," his voice whispered eagerly. She moved toward it slowly, feeling strangely nervous as she knelt down beside him.

"Do you have a migraine?" she asked apprehensively. It had always been so much easier to talk in the dark.

"No," Grissom answered, reaching blindly for her hand and somehow finding it. "I just…needed some time."

_It doesn't always end in pain and fear._

"Me too."

"I'm so sorry, Sara," he said, and neither of them knew exactly why he was sorry, but they both needed to hear it anyway.

Sara closed her eyes and rested her forehead on his shoulder. She was still so tired.

_Just try? For him?_

"I love you," Sara whispered. It both was truer than ever before and incredibly painful to say. And that was good.


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: **For the purpose of this chapter, there is now a very large storage room that has boxes full of evidence from old, closed cases. I don't know if there is such a room or not, but that's what makes it fiction. ;)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Getting hurt is inevitable," Penelope said, sipping her tea delicately.

"Fear of pain is a common reason to push away the people you love the most. But pain is no reason to alienate yourself, Sara. I think you know that, and I believe you're doing much better. I'm very proud of you, you know."

Sara fidgeted slightly in her seat and felt awkward as usual. "Yeah. Thank you."

The cup of tea settled back into its saucer with a light clank. Penelope leaned forward with clasped hands and looked into Sara's eyes unwaveringly.

"Don't lose the people you love," Penelope said blankly. Sara had never seen such an exposed look in her eyes before. It was a haunted look. It was unsettling.

"Love is painful," she continued, her voice suddenly more like a friend than a therapist. "The death of the ones you love is painful. But repressing that love…letting it slip away…it's a whole other kind of pain, Sara."

Sara nodded and wanted to look away, but found she couldn't. Penelope's eyes, she noticed for the first time, were brown. They looked a lot like her own.

After leaving Penelope's office, Sara bought a Mountain Dew. Then she went looking for Grissom. He wasn't in his office. He wasn't in the break room, where she found Greg throwing a red rubber ball up and down.

"Hey," she said, taking a seat beside him.

His eyes widened. "Sara!"

She smiled a little, feeling guilty. Her left hand was wet and cold from the soda can.

"How's, uh, your case going?"

One corner of his mouth turned down. "Done. That kid's in deep shit now."

Sara nodded and tried not to notice the tiny pang of regret that was tugging insistently at her heart. It could have been her case too.

"Randall White, huh?"

But Greg was shaking his head. "Nope. Tom White. Well, both of them, actually. The other kid got arrested for possession."

Her mouth was suddenly dry. She took a sip of Mountain Dew and swallowed slowly. Thought of a cold and shining pocketknife.

"Tom White? He looked so…innocuous. What was the motive?"

"Apparently he'd been harassing Porter, and Porter threatened to press charges. The kid was afraid he'd lose his scholarship, so he killed the guy." Greg shook his head but kept his eyes on his ball, bouncing it a bit.

Up, down. Up, down.

"Things never happen the way you thought they would," he said. "Just have to flow with the current, you know? Otherwise you only start drowning."

He turned to look at her and gave her a small smile.

She put one hand on his shoulder. It was warm under the cotton of his shirt.

"I'm sorry about what happened, Greg."

She met his eyes and he nodded. There was relief and wariness and friendship in his eyes. He nodded, and they were okay.

Sara liked the storage room. It was cool and dim and always quiet. And so because Grissom was at a crime scene, she offered to store the evidence from the Porter case for Greg. Because she had nothing else to do, she took her time putting it away and ran her hands over all the dusty boxes, remembering cases. Because she was morbidly curious, she took down the boxes that read _Natalie Davis/Miniatures. _ One of them had her own name on it, and she knew the shiver she felt deep in her spine had little to do with the temperature of the room. The box read _Sara Sidle miniature/kidnapping _in sloppy handwritingShe kneeled down on the floor and stared at the box for a moment. Then she took off the lid.

The doll was no larger than her finger. The desert sand was precisely placed, the tiny Mustang expertly created. From under the car, she squinted at her own hand, unmoving and bleak. It was a faultless model of her very own death scene.

Intricate. Perfect. Artful. Haunting.

Wrong.

Sara looked down at her own hands and moved both of them, just because she could. Then she thought of the conditional tense.

_Could've died, would've died. _Should have died.

And didn't.

Sara learned that day that the storage room had bad cell phone reception. She walked outside to dial Grissom's cell number and thought about what she would say when he picked up the phone. _Want to go to dinner tonight? Want to ride a roller coaster? We should do something. _

"Sara?"

"Hey. Am I interrupting your crime scene or anything?"

When he spoke, he sounded slightly worried.

"Just dusting for prints. What's up? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. I just called to see when you're off work. Because I kind of wanted…"

Then she heard a big bang, and Grissom's quickened breathing, and urgent voices in the distant background, and then three more bangs. And even before her fingers went numb and her heart crawled up into her throat, Sara knew she was hearing gunshots.

"Grissom? Grissom? Are you there?"

But there was nothing, and when she pulled the phone away from her ear with a thousand desperate questions the screen only said Call Ended.


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N: **Last chapter, I know it's really short, but there wasn't a whole lot to write. Hopefully it isn't too terribly anticlimactic...and thank you so, so much for the reviews. It really means a lot to me.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Warrick."

He was standing in the layout room with his palms on the table, studying something, when Sara walked in. Ran in, actually.

"Hey, Sara." His eyebrows were slightly raised in surprise. "What's up?"

"Where's Grissom? Who's on the case with him? Where is he?"

Her voice was shaking a little, and she couldn't help it.

_Don't panic. Don't think irrationally. _

Warrick's green eyes were boring into her, inquisitive and concerned.

"He's with Nick. Down by the—"

"Take me." Hands trembling, she pulled out her keys and tossed them at him, probably with more force than was necessary.

"Just take me there. I'll explain on the way." The room was too hot, the air was too thick, how could anybody breathe? The clock had to be wrong, the seconds were going too fast.

"Okay, okay," Warrick said, shrugging on his coat. Sara let out her breath without realizing she'd been holding it at all.

_Don't panic. Just don't think at all._

"Gunshots?" He snuck a quick glance at her before turning again to face the road, where they were going twenty miles over the speed limit.

"Yeah. Really close. They weren't loud enough to be in the same room, and I don't think Grissom got…got…hurt. But they were close."

Warrick lifted one large hand off the steering wheel and rubbed the back of his neck.

"Damn."

And then they were silent for a while. It was the longest road Sara had ever seen, and suddenly the seconds were passing agonizingly slowly. Finally, Warrick pulled into the driveway of a suburban home. Conventional brick house, perfectly trimmed shrubs. It wasn't a good place to have her life changed forever. It wasn't a good place to lose everything. Wasn't, wasn't.

Sara's hands were sweating as she jumped out of the car with Warrick scrambling after her. She willed her legs to go quicker, but it was like a dream where she just couldn't run fast enough.

"Sara! Sara!" Voices called behind her, but she didn't have time. Didn't have time to turn around and see Warrick's worried eyes, or hear Nick's southern drawl.

"Ma'am."

Sara looked up to see a police officer. He had a small nose and a receding hairline. And suddenly, she was aware of what seemed like a thousand police cars. Were there ambulances? Sirens blared and red lights flashed, and she was blinded by the memory of gunshots.

"The CSI's that were on this scene, are they okay? I heard gunshots."

The police officer nodded calmly. "Yes, there was an unexpected altercation."

Altercation. Sara gritted her teeth.

"Damn it! Were people shot or weren't they?" Sara was vaguely aware that she was yelling, was agitated and scared and angry. Why the hell would anybody hire this guy?

"Ma'am…" But before she could punch him, there was a hand on her shoulder. And when she spun around, she realized that Nick was okay. He was in the background talking to a police officer as Warrick stood beside him. And Grissom was okay, because he was standing and breathing and had his hand on her shoulder.

"Sara?"

He was not bleeding or dead, and it suddenly became a little easier to breathe.

"You hung up your phone," Sara said shakily. The words sounded absurd the moment they left her lips. A slight smile twitched at the corner of Grissom's mouth. There was relief in his eyes.

"I had to draw my gun. Some guy got into the house and started shooting, the police were on him in an instant," he said, moving his hand to her back and leading her away from the policeman.

Sara stopped and put her hands on his chest just to make sure he was still there. The warmth seemed to radiate from his vest, making her hands tremble.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm okay," he murmured, his voice softening. "I was calling you back when I saw you about to beat up that police officer. Things were just really crazy for a few minutes there. I—"

But she didn't really care to know the specifics of the situation, so she just kissed him, and let him kiss her back with a desperate kind of love.

Finally he pulled back and took a deep breath. "I'm sorry I scared you," he said, eyes still closed.

Sara frowned at him.

"You didn't scare me," she retorted.

He opened his eyes and raised one eyebrow.

"Sara, you're crying."

And she didn't even really believe it until she put a hand to her face and felt the wetness of tears. Felt something.

"We should go to France," she said, and cried harder.

"Okay," he said. His eyes were willing and bright.

"We should go skydiving." Sara couldn't tell whether her tears were from joy or sadness.

"Okay."

"We should…we should…"

"We should make love on my kitchen table," Grissom said decidedly. "We should go home and make love, then we should go out to eat, and then we should spend the rest of our lives together."

And that sounded good, so she let him put his arms around her and hold her tight, a shelter from the bright lights and sirens.

She could feel his breath on her ear. "We're going to be okay," he murmured.

And it was true, it was true.


End file.
